advantageous or disadvantageous, i.e., as pleasant or unpleasant. We approve actions which are not advantageous in this sense, and which have no reference to self-interest in any form. Actions thus approved in and for themselves are called virtuous. Moral approval is therefore independent of self-interest.[1] It cannot be explained solely by custom, education, instruction, or the association of ideas; it is not a product of law, human or divine.[2] In short, it is natural not artificial. Moreover, it cannot be regarded as a direct emanation from reason. The criterion of truth and the standard of right are different, for true propositions can be made about an action which is wrong.[3] Virtuous and vicious actions alike conform to truth or reason; the mind discerns truth about both. The faculty of reason, therefore, can never justify actions or condemn them, and it will be found that those who identify moral goodness and conformity to truth unconsciously employ a criterion of moral goodness which reason by itself cannot supply. Reason, indeed, plays but a subordinate rôle in conduct. It does not move to action; for knowledge is not desire, and without desire no action is possible. It cannot determine any end of action; it can only suggest means towards the attainment of the ends which are constituted by the active principles of our nature.[4] In these circumstances, Hutcheson maintains, it is necessary to suppose that there "is a natural and immediate determination to approve certain affections and actions consequent upon them; or a natural sense of immediate excellence in them, not referred to any other quality perceivable by our other senses or by reasoning."[5] It would be strange if no such moral sense or instinct existed. The Author of our nature has provided us with instinctive impulses and desires which give "quick and powerful instructions" in regard to what is necessary for the preservation of the body. Analogy would lead us to infer that, in matters which concern our welfare on the whole, He has not left us at the mercy of the slow and uncertain processes of reason.[6]
- ↑ Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 4th edition, pp. 111 ff.
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 217, 229, 242, 267. See also System of Moral Philosophy, I, pp. 55, 57.
- ↑ Essay on the Passions, Treatise II, Section 1.
- ↑ System, I, pp. 56, 58; The Passions, II, Sec. 1; Inquiry, p. 195.
- ↑ System, I, p. 58.
- ↑ Inquiry, Preface; see also p. 272.
